


Blood Thrives

by mautadite



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 13:12:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2733848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mautadite/pseuds/mautadite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>First man to try to steal her thinks better of it before he’s finished the deed. It’s got little enough to do with his own mind, and more to do with the spear that Ygritte’s mother jams underneath his throat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood Thrives

**Author's Note:**

  * For [originally](https://archiveofourown.org/users/originally/gifts).



> Written for round eleven of the GOT Exchange. Prompt: _Anything that focuses on Ygritte, and especially on life beyond the Wall._
> 
>  **Warning** for references to rape and kidnapping (all within the wider wildling stealing culture). I’ve always wondered about Ygritte’s mama and what kind of relationship they might have had, so I really liked writing this. I took a few liberties with some canon details, but please enjoy.  <3

First man to try to steal her thinks better of it before he’s finished the deed. It’s got little enough to do with his own mind, and more to do with the spear that Ygritte’s mother jams underneath his throat, making him retrace his steps. The knife he used to slash his way into their tent glitters in one hand, and his eyes glitter too, watching Ygritte’s mother like a shadowcat. The dark makes them seem brighter than natural, his eyes.

He changes his mind, but his second choice isn’t any smarter; instead of Ygritte, he tries to steal Gurta instead. Ygritte sucks on the bone handle of her knife as they fight. She tries to join in, once, but her mother strikes her gently in the stomach with the butt of her bronze-pointed spear, and she settles down sulking on her furs, and watches them as they scuffle.

When the man is dead, Gurta deals with the body. A few of the spearwives in the tents nearby offer their aid. Ygritte watches them move back and forth through the open maw of the tent, like ants on a giant tongue. Cold air breezes in around her, and she wraps herself up against its bite. Gurta says this ain’t hardly even autumn, and where they’re headed, it’ll only get colder. But they’ll be prepared for it, they will. Gurta also says that. Her mother’s seen twenty and two years, compared to Ygritte’s six, and most of them have been winter. 

By the time her mother returns, she has all her questions prepared.

“Why’d you kill him? Arthla didn’t kill the Thenn what tried to steal her last moon, and she didn’t like him none.”

She rubs at her nose and starts sucking on the hilt of her knife again. Gurta raps her knuckles sharply with her spear, jerking Ygritte’s hand away from her mouth.

“You’re too young for stealing,” she snaps. “Some men like to take their women young, so they’re used to them when it’s time to take the lass to wife. I don’t hold with that.”

“I weren’t afeared of him, or any other man,” Ygritte says at once, which makes Gurta snort.

“You should be. Just like he shoulda known to be scared o’ me. If the look o’ your pelt makes you seem the prey, then you should get to know the mind of everyone who’ll come huntin’ you.” This is followed by another rap to the head, when Ygritte raises her thumb to her mouth thoughtful-like.

“I ain’t prey,” she says finally, sulking to the last. She spits on the cold hard floor of their tent, where the man’s blood still mixes with the land, and Gurta laughs and hoots.

“No you ain’t, my fierce girl,” she says solemnly. She ruffles Ygritte’s hair, a handspan longer and a few tints lighter than her own. “You’re a beauty and a hellcat, and I think you’ll make ‘em all learn your name.”

~

The other offense that the man had committed, Ygritte learns later, is that of blood. The man had been distant kin to the clan’s leader, and therefore kin to them.

“Blood that close, it spoils,” Gurta says darkly. “You can’t melt ice in ice.”

She learns that only weaklings steal women of their own village; a real man seeks out a lass from another clan, and a real woman will only let herself be taken by someone who equals or bests her. Ygritte learns that no one who has cared to try has ever equalled or bested her mother; it is why they share the tent between the two of them alone, why it is only Gurta there to object when the men come into their space at night, and leave bleeding and laughing.

Ygritte never asks her mother about the man who fathered her. She knows more about her mother’s sire than her own; a man who braved the water with a group of raiders, stole a Skagosi maiden, and brought her back to the clan to father three children on her, each fiercer than the last. It is another reason why she and her mother are so desired. And feared by some, as her mother had predicted. Ygritte is twelve years old, and handier with a bow and knife than all the boys her age.

When she is old enough to give her father more than a passing thought, it is Ryk who gives her what he knows of the tale as they cast their lines into one of the upper prongs of the Antler. The men are already calling him Longspear, for the weapon that he had wielded to bring down an elk, though he insists that it has more to do with what’s between his legs.

They huddle together on the shore, as Longspear tells the story.

“It were the night of a great gathering, more clans in one space than had been seen in decades. Three men from different villages tried to steal her for themselves that night. Your father was one of them. Gurta beat them all back, with help from her brothers, your uncles.”

“Errol and Urd.” Both dead long years past, but Gurta had loved them well, and speaks of them often.

“Aye. It happened again on the second night of the gathering, and again the men left her tent without their prize. Same on the third night. On the fourth night, the tent were empty. Your mother’d judged each man silently on each night, and she judged that your father was the best o’ them, no matter that he couldn’t steal her. So she’d gone off t’ steal him herself.” 

And it had been quite the steal. Her father had been twice touched by flame, they said, with his fiery hair and the blood coloured stain that marked his chest from birth. 

“Thrice blessed, they were called,” Longspear claims, testing the weight of his line hopefully. “You know your mother’s a prize, and even though it’s nothin’ to boast of to be stolen by a woman, she’s a beauty with a warrior’s strength, so there was no shame in it neither. With her red hair and his red hair and the birthmark, our clan was said t’ be the luckiest among all the free folk.” 

Ygritte isn’t sure how much of the story she can believe, so she finally takes the issue up with her mother that evening, as she skins her fish near their cookfire.

“What happened t’ him?” she wants to know, after Gurta has grunted affirmatively all through the tale.

“He died.” Gurta shrugs. She beckons Ygritte to hand the fish over for gutting. “All men do. And I ain’t found another his equal.”

~

The fourth man to try to steal her is successful, but it’s mostly her doing. Red of hair he is, and sweet of face; Ygritte thinks to follow her mother’s example, take a man who is as lucky is she is. He tumbles her good, and she would have been his for the taking, if he’d only had the courage to try harder. But the second time he comes for her, a love-tap and a little broken bone from Longspear Ryk scares him off, and there is no third time. Ygritte is fourteen years old.

“He weren’t nearly good enough for you,” Gurta snorts when she hears. 

By this time, the clan is moving again. They pull up their foundations easily, a habit made simple out of necessity, and start picking their way south through the Great Forest. Ygritte maintains a hard pace, moving with the scouts at the front of the caravans. She is more used to ice and mountains than wood and root, and betimes, it feels like the forest is trying to squeeze her out. Bitter black ironwood grows stark out of the snow, and the weirwoods cluster together like grandfathers around a fire, faces full of mourning and woe. 

“How could them down south ever say they own the land?” she asks her mother when they stop for camp. Gurta rolls the muscles in her back, and stabs her spear into the earth as she sits.

“That’s what they do. When you say you own a thing, you control it. Leastways you think you do.”

“What they want to control that much for?” Ygritte asks scornfully. Here, she has her clan, her mother, her bow, her knife. She has animals that give themselves up to fill her belly, animals she might war with, animals with whom she might share a space with. She has ice and mountains and trees. There’s nothing else that she needs.

“So that that no one _else_ can own it, girl.”

Ygritte draws one of her bows from her quiver, and uses her knife to sharpen the stone edge. “I’d like to see them come up here, try to own this forest.”

Gurta barks with laughter; the sound echoes in the chamber of the clearing where they sit, bouncing around until it seems to come from all sides. The heart tree in particular picks up the sound, and for a moment, it is as if the gods are laughing too, at the thought of the kneelers coming up into their domain.

“Half of them’d piss themselves at the thought,” Gurta assures her. “Know what them crows call this wood? The ‘Haunted’ Forest. Even them that tries so hard to keep us out o’ their world’re scared t’ come into ours.”

Ygritte wrinkles her nose, looks up at the high trees and their deep, wizened faces. There is beauty here, to be sure, and power.

“ _Is_ it haunted?” she asks.

Gurta moves to smack her with the blunt end of her spear; Ygritte blocks the blow with her elbow, and her mother grunts with pleasure.

“There’re ghosts everywhere, child. They want respect, is what, not fear. That don’t do them no good. ‘S why the crows’ll never thrive here. They fear, and what they fear, they try t’ kill.”

Her mother’s face is full of shadows, hair dripping round her face like the glowing embers of a fire. She’s never said how Ygritte’s father died; Ygritte supposes that one day she’ll be ready to be asked.

“Go pray, girl,” her mother orders, nodding her head towards the great heart tree, where a few members of the clan are gathered. “Give the forest your respect, not your fear or mistrust.”

“I’ll pray when I want,” she snaps back out of habit, but sooner rather than later, she finds herself lifting to her feet, and ambling towards the faces of the gods. The movement chases away the cold that was settling into her bones, and the prayer chases away all other thought. For a moment, peace reigns in the woods.

~

They start hearing of Mance Rayder.

“I don’t like it none,” Ygritte says, picking the remnants of a rabbit out of her teeth. There’d still been some fur left on the meat; Longspear has never been the best at skinning. “The free folk don’t need no king.”

“We’ve had kings before. And I reckon he don’t mean it like the kneelers do,” Longspear says, sucking on a bone. He throws the marrowless husk to one of the camp dogs, prowling around the edges of their fire. 

“He _was_ a kneeler,” Ygritte points out. “A _crow_.”

“But the blood is good,” Gurta says.

“The blood is good,” Arthla echoes. Ygritte flicks her tongue against her teeth impatiently, and waits for them to explain.

“Mance’s father knelt at the Wall, but his mother was free,” Gurta says, drawing her furs close around her neck. One of them is striped dirty white and black; all that remains of a fierce, starving shadowcat that had fallen upon their band near on two moons ago. Ygritte’s bow had brought it down, and so she had gotten its pelt. It’s been sitting around Gurta’s shoulders ever since.

“A crow stole a free woman?” Longspear asks sceptically.

“Didn’t steal her,” Gurta says, shaking her head. “Used her, got her belly big, then ran back to his crow masters. Not too many years later, the child born of the union was taken when a band of black brothers murdered a group of folk trying to get up and over the Wall.”

“They were killed?” Ygritte simmers with anger. “For the crime of wantin’ t’ be free?”

“Don’t you know, girl, that freedom’s the foulest crime t’ them?” Arthla pokes at the fire with her stick. “A few of the folk escaped the black swords though, an’ passed on the tale to the clans they met, of what’d become of the crow’s boy.”

“Not the crow’s boy,” Gurta corrects. “He’s a child o’ the free, and he proves it now by comin’ back to us. His blood is more red th’n black, mark my words.”

“And what does he want from us?” Ygritte sniffs, still mistrustful. “Might be he learnt some funny ideas, spending all that time with the crows.”

“I told you, girl.” Gurta’s cuff almost catches her on the back of her neck, but Ygritte checks her with the bone handle of her knife. Her mother grins. “The blood is good, strong. He was born of a free woman, and the woman’s blood is always thicker.”

“I dunno about that.” Longspear grins. “I’ll believe it of you, Gurta, and of your Ygritte, but as for the likes of Elsa and Frid…”

He’s too far away for her to cuff, but not far enough to escape the reach of her spear. Ygritte snickers as he massages the back of his head.

“Did I ever tell you the story,” Gurta continues as if he hadn’t spoken, “of the women who lay with bears? They all bore fine, strong daughters, with all the beauty and cunning of their mothers, and all the strength and little of the savagery of their fathers.”

“I’ve heard the tale more’n a hundred times,” Ygritte complains. But she’s moving closer to the fire anyway, head cocked in her mother’s direction. Gurta tells stories well. Her voice carries over stone and ice, and brings members of their camp creeping closer to listen to the tale of Morgaine and her daughters. 

Ygritte is so used to hearing of her own beauty and so used to being in quiet, awed respect of her mother’s strength, that she sometimes forgets. Gurta too is kissed by fire, as well as being stoneborn. Ygritte is accustomed to looks of envy and lust, but it takes her a while to decipher the expression on most people’s faces as they listen to her mother. It is a fierce look, a yearning one, as if they are trying to siphon off some of her strength, her fire, her luck.

~

At the purlieus of the Great Forest, they meet up with a band of Hornfoots and cave dwellers. They lose two women and steal three of their own, between Stiffjaw and the Sling. Ygritte beds down with one of the men of the Frostfangs, who has an impish cast to his hard, purple-painted face. She leaves his bedroll right after and he doesn’t object, which is all for the best; she wouldn’t want to have to ruin any of his pretty features.

The stealing happens on the first night; the next day, they barter with information and supplies. Ygritte trades two bone daggers for a sturdy bronze one, a lock of her hair for a handful of fine arrows. A few Thenns who attached themselves to the band haggle with Longspear over a fire-hardened flail for a half hour before talk turns to other matters.

“The Magnar would know of this Rayder,” one of them grunts in the First Tongue. By wordless agreement, they take the men over to Gurta, towards whom all talk of Mance seems to gravitate these days. 

“I’ve not met the man,” she tells the bronze warriors, “but I’d soon have it so. He’s amassin’ quite the number of followers, we been told. If the Magnar wishes to contest his title of king, it won’t be as easily won as he might think.”

The Thenns offer no comment to that; they only let their flinty eyes roam over those gathered near. A man from Whitetree speaks next.

“I reckon he can do what he’s claimin’. Unite the free folk. He’s not interested in any skirmishin’ with the black brothers, he wants t’ give us something _more_. He’d have us in the richness of the south, he would.”

They’ve discussed this before, Ygritte and Gurta. To have the free folk united seems like little more than a dream to her; the free folk marching south to claim what should rightfully be shared with them is like something from a children’s tale. But if the man could do it… aye, that was the sort of man she’d think about following. Especially if her mother did.

The Thenns hear everyone, saying little and revealing less. They melt back into the cold at the gathering’s end, and when night falls, it is as if they’d been naught but a feverroot dream.

“What do you think the Magnar will do?” Ygritte asks her mother in the morning’s pale strains of light. Gurta burps, and briskly wipes the sleep from her eyes.

“We will see.”

~

The twelfth man to try to steal Ygritte comes back for her a third time, but when he does, it is as a wight. Ygritte is sixteen years old.

The Others fall upon their camp in the early dark, as the shadows are leaking back into the mountains. Ygritte jerks into awareness a half a second before Gurta’s hand clamps down on her shoulder with enough force to bruise the bone, and then she is truly awake. She hears the scuffling, the sounds of fighting and screaming from the edges of the camp. They had bedded down within a stone’s throw of the Milkwater, two days or more way from the northern river’s source. Ygritte shakes herself up, and looks into her mother’s eyes. They are as hard and grey as the Frozen Shore, and the air around them both is something colder than cold.

“Protect them! Fight!”

It is her mother’s voice. Gurta shoves Ygritte’s bow into her hand, brings their foreheads crashing together, kisses her, and then is gone.

Every child of the free knows what to look for, knows the signs. Her heart is hammering as she shrugs on her pack and nocks an arrow. The beasts would have scented them, small as their band might be. She wonders how many of them walk tonight. The free folk fight for what is theirs when there is cause, down to the last man and last woman, but with the Others, survival is law. And survival, in these cases, means flight.

First though, she must protect her people, and Ygritte has never balked at a task. The first wight she sees dies a hundred paces away from her, struck through the eye with a flaming arrow. Her eyes are quick to adjust to the low light; she sees children running away where she advances, followed by their terror-struck parents. Above, an eagle screams; Ygritte wonders if it is Orell, or if the creature is looking for its master. 

She moves so that she does not think about the cold, bypassing abandoned tents and fires and furs, keeping a mental count in her head. Her trigger finger remains stiff against her cheek, and it is like this that she comes upon Longspear, grappling with a blue-eyed monster. The panic strikes her for a bare second – _Wulff, that’s Wulff, but no, it ain’t him, Wulff ain’t there no more_ – before she drops low, grabs a glowing log from a dying fire, and throws it with a whistle to her clanbrother. He catches it as sure as any spear, and fetches the thing that used to be Wulff a blow to the heart that sends him on the way to dying a second time. The creature lurches, and Ygritte helps to fan the flames until it is roasting.

“Where’s Gurta?” Longspear yells, panic rampant in his plain face. Ygritte points in the direction that she’d seen her disappear. As if signalled by a knell, she hears it then: what seems like a million miles away but incredibly close, her mother’s great, war-like yell pierces the night. 

It is the hardest and the easiest thing, to run towards it.

Her mother likes to tell stories, has the voice for them and the look for them, but she’d never told Ygritte about the Others. All those stories she had gotten from the clan, just like the stories of her father. It occurs to her, as she runs, how little she really knows of the woman who bore her; the fire-kissed, stoneborn warrior. 

It occurs to her, too, how very, very long this summer has been.

~

They arrive too late to save Gurta from the Other; she lies dead upon the ground, struck with half a dozen wounds that do not bleed. They are early enough, however, to save her from becoming one of the Walkers, one who would return to plague them in the night. Ygritte is lucky in that, the elders tell her, for being spared that sight. Lucky, kissed by fire.

Gurta burns with all the rest. Ygritte takes her weapons and her gear; the spear with the bronze head and the shadowcat pelt. Longspear helps her with the pyre, and every able-bodied, uninjured survivor helps to transport the bodies. A few of them turn mid-journey, opening bright and awful blue eyes to the sky, but they have torches and fuel at the ready. Most of the folk are still frozen by shock and fear, but they push themselves into action, because they must.

Longspear stands next to Ygritte as she watches the fire from a distance. She feels the tears stabbing like tiny pins behind her eyes, but doesn’t bother to cry. It would just freeze.

“Always told m’self that I’d ask her about him one day,” she remarks, thick-voiced. “Jus’ so I’d know it all, from her.”

Ryk eyes her sidelong. He hasn’t tried to give her comfort yet, and doesn’t start now. He’s grieving in his own way, too.

“Your father?”

“Aye.”

They watch the flames crackle, rising and eating the air and reaching for the grey clouds above.

“D’you regret it? Not asking her.”

It doesn’t take Ygritte long to ponder it. 

“No. He’s dead; won’t make no matter to me. I know what’s important. The blood is strong, she said.”

Longspear nods, and hesitating for a moment, aims a small punch at her shoulder. Ygritte twists his hand and punches him harder. He smiles.

“The blood is strong.”

The wind blows down from the north, forcing them to step a few metres to the side to avoid the gusts of smoke and ash. When the sky and air clear, Longspear Ryk is looking down at her; she can tell, even though she’s not yet taken her eyes off the fire.

“Will you be wantin’ to go and find him now, then? Mance Rayder?”

Ygritte is still watching the flames. She adjusts her new spear behind her back.

“Aye. I think I will.”

~~~

By the time she meets Jon Snow, Ygritte’s lost count of the men who’ve tried to steal her, though she has a few treasured memories of those who succeeded.

Jon Snow isn’t like any of them. He bungles his first attempts at stealing her, denies ever having tried to, and every other minute some fool southron notion passes his pretty pink lips. But she likes the way he looks at her with shy eyes, the way his hair falls around his face, the way he handles that sword of his. She thinks, _even if he don’t know it, he wants to be free_.

Gurta would approve, she knows, even if she wouldn’t say so. The thought makes her grin. _He’ll do_.


End file.
